How things look through an Oregonian's eyes

June 28, 2003

Laurel and I have been caught up in summer movie madness recently, except we haven’t gone to see any of the movies that people are mad about. No Charlie’s Angels (sexist and lacks redeeming social value, according to Laurel, which are two great reasons to see it, in my no-account opinion) . No Hulk (we agree: movies based on comic book characters are off-limits). No 2 Fast 2 Furious (nothing is more boring than movies with a car theme except the Indy 500, where cars do crash—which is interesting—but only after going around and around in ovals—which isn’t).

So we’ve been DVD’ing it, and want to pass along one obvious and three not-so-obvious recommendations (links lead to Roger Ebert’s reviews, which are our main, and reliable, guide to what sucks cinematically and what doesn’t). Yes, everyone knows that The Hours is a great movie, based on a great novel, with great actors. But I checked it out with a “this will be good for me, but I won’t really like it” attitude, much like I consider broccoli. Laurel was surprised when I brought it home, since this is a quintessential Three Chicks Talking film. Except they don’t talk to each other, being in different times and places, except at the very end, details of which I can’t reveal, for those who haven’t seen the movie.

This different time and space thing did cause me to do some of my Cartmann (South Park) imitations at the beginning of The Hours: “Damn it! This is too confusing! Stick to one place and one time for more than a few seconds! Movies should be simple and I shouldn’t have to think so much!...No! They did it again! STOP MOVING AROUND!” After a while though, I learned to flow with my confusion, and The Hours became highly enjoyable. At least, as enjoyable as a movie about suicide and depression can be.

Late Marriage is much lighter, sort of a Jewish version of Monsoon Wedding. It is Israeli (how many Israeli movies do we get to see?) and spoken in Hebrew and Georgian. So you probably will need the subtitles. Usually Laurel and I avoid subtitled movies like the plague, great foreign film buffs that we are, because it is too much work to read them. But Late Marriage was worth the price, if only to make us feel exceedingly grateful that we were never part of a big extended Jewish family who wanted to control our lives. It’s hard to believe that, in the 21st century, there are those in the Western world who still believe that parents can choose a bride for their son, but this movie must be based to a large degree on fact. Rent it. You’ll like it.

Happy Accidentswas a happy surprise, one of those “Oh, lord, what did Laurel bring home from the video store?” She delights in finding off-beat only-one-copy-on-the-shelf movies that sometimes are a rare gem, and sometimes a clod of tasteless dirt. This movie may never have been released. We certainly don’t remember it appearing back in 2001. It’s one of those romantic, is this guy really from the future or is he crazy?, movies, sort of like the Kevin Spacey movie where he may or may not be an alien from another planet. Marisa Tomei is cute, as always, and Vincent D’Onofrio makes a good match for her. Not an unforgettable movie (I can’t remember how it ends), but worth $3.79, or whatever.

Lastly, we also were pleasantly surprised by The Mystic Masseur, which suffers from a weird title (though the movie is based on a book with the same name by Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul) and a weird DVD cover photo of a cross-legged yogi in a turban. Yes, the photo is true to the movie, but there is much more to the movie than this cartoonish image suggests. It actually is a quasi-serious tale set in the Indian community of Trinidad. Reason enough to see the movie is to hear Indian accents with a Caribbean “Hey mon!” overtone. The Mystic Masseur is about a man who may or may not be a real mystic, but the readers of his books, and those he supposedly heals, think he is. When it comes to mysticism, what is real anyway?

June 24, 2003

It just keeps getting worse. Just when you think that the Bush administration can’t act any more high-handedly, dishonestly, and destructively-to-the-environment than it already is, we learn that there is more black magic in their evil bag of tricks. This is several day-old news, but it still frosts me—the decision to eliminate any significant mention of global climate change from the environmental report issued by the E.P.A. It really is astounding, how Bush and company are willing to let the planet go down the tubes so they can issue some paybacks to their corporate contributors.

Why the public isn’t more outraged by this incredibly shortsighted and stupid policy decision is beyond me. “America, the Nation of Sheep,” this should be our national motto rather than “In God We Trust,” or whatever the heck it is. I don’t get moved to outrage all that often, but the scientific evidence is so strong that humans are pushing the world’s climate to a tipping point, with unforeseen but nasty consequences, there simply is no justification for putting a political spin on what should be a dispassionate report on the state of the environment. I believe there is more to reality that this physical universe we inhabit. But this material reality is all we have so long as we live within our mortal frames, so we need to do what we can to be sure that it stays in good natural health. To bargain away our children’s and grandchildren’s future for some petty political points, how can we put up with it?

June 23, 2003

It’s a macabre love ritual, this Tour of Homes horror I subject myself to each year. Laurel’s birthday was last Saturday, as it is every summer solstice. I made the traditional poppy seed cake, and I made the traditional butter cream frosting: 2/3 of a stick of butter and a full pound of powdered sugar—I never fully realized what a nutritional nightmare cakes are until I started making Laurel’s birthday offering. It’s the husbandly effort that counts, not the aesthetics of the result, for the cake ended up with a strangely collapsed center, for unknown reasons that I like to think have more to do with the vagaries of our oven than my minimalist cooking skills.

As if this wasn’t enough birthday excitement, after the cake was done I loaded the dog and Laurel in the family Volvo, and we headed off to sample the Salem Tour of Homes. I go to the Tour of Homes with Laurel full knowing what horrors I will experience; I go as an act of love, an experiential birthday gift, offering myself up as a sacrifice to the gods of 21st century home design whom Laurel worships much more than me. We mostly skip the lower-priced homes, which means less than $350,000 or so. This assures that Laurel will be able to play out her role to the fullest, the role of Woman Martyred at the Altar of a 1973 House, Destined Never to Enjoy the Blessings of Modern Life.

“Look,” she says at the first house (and the second, and the third, and the fourth), “every kitchen these days has those thick countertops, while we just have a thin sheet of formica.” “OK,” I reply in as submissive a tone as I can muster, “you’re right. We have horribly out-of-date countertops.” Then Laurel turns to the appliances. “That dishwasher is one of those super-quiet models. Ditto the refrigerator. I can’t stand how noisy ours are.” “You’re right. We have horribly noisy appliances.”

Upstairs we tread, me the appropriate three humble shuffling steps behind, eager and ready to agree with whatever the Wife says next about our decrepit house. “Oh! Oh!! My god! Oh, my God!!” (there is more than a little architectural eroticism in this Tour of Homes). “That walk-in closet! What I would give…what I would give for it.” (I’m thinking, me; the dog; her first-born child, if she had had one) “I’ve got to keep my stuff in three separate closets. I’ve got to move my summer and winter stuff back and forth every year. Everyone has a walk-in closet except us, everyone.” “Yes,” I say, “You’re right. We have horribly small closets.”

And so it goes. With the showers that are so much grander than ours, and have a seat besides. With the jet-equipped bathtubs that put our vintage model to shame. With the washers and dryers that have sophisticated cleaning controls akin to an Boeing 747 instrument panel. With the three-car garages that you can actually put a car (or two, or three) in, as contrasted to our carport, and garage filled to overflowing with everything but an automobile. With the woodwork that doesn’t have the scratches and imperfections our 30 year old walls and ceiling display. Throughout the Tour, I occupy myself by keeping a running total of the cost of all the Absolutely Necessary Improvements that Laurel is telling me we must plan for to keep our house minimally livable. When the total exceeds our net worth, I mentally clear the register and start a new tab, figuring that any number subtracted from zero is imaginary and not to be taken too seriously.

Eventually 6 pm rolls around, closing hour for the Tour of Homes. We drive home, Laurel clutching a pile of home improvement brochures she has picked up during our touring. We turn into our driveway. And Laurel says, as she does every year, “This is the most beautiful setting of any home we saw today, and also the most beautiful yard.” And I say, “You’re right. We have a wonderful house.” We walk inside. Laurel puts the brochures down on our horribly thin vinyl countertop. I wait until she is out of the room, and hide the brochures in my office. We bake a frozen pizza in our old-fashioned oven. We eat a collapsed cake with terribly rich butter cream frosting. We’re home. The horror is over. Until next year. Or until Laurel finds the brochures.

June 19, 2003

Our (mostly Laurel's) appeal of the Nielsen lot partitioning in Spring Lake Estates continues to take its twists and turns, but the road is inexorably coming closer to its end. Some time back Laurel testified at a hearing where Denny Nielsen and his hydrologist-for-hire, Nick Coffey, presented their (weak) case for overruling the Hearing Officer's initial denial of the lot partitioning. The Marion County Commissioners decided to remand the decision back to the Hearings Officer, so several issues were revisited, such as the number and cause of well deepenings/replacements in the area, and the rate at which groundwater is being recharged from rainfall--given the geology around here.

After the hearing, Laurel wrote up her response to Coffey's grasping-at-straws arguments, with a little help from me. Then Coffey and Nielsen got to have the last word, they being the applicants and having the burden of proof. Yesterday Laurel went to pick up a copy of what they turned in to the Hearings Officer, and was surprised to find that she is being accused of practicing geology without a license. Actually, we consider this Coffey complaint to be a pretty nice compliment, since it shows that she is competent enough in hydrogeology matters to be confused with a real geologist.

It's amazing what desperate lot partitioners will do when they don't have any factual legs to stand on. Coffey couldn't refute Laurel's facts, so he had to try to deny her right to say them. That's pathetic. If anybody shouldn't be practicing geology, it is Nick Coffey--a point that Laurel wasn't shy about making at the hearing. Stay tuned for the next episode in this hydrogeology soap opera, which we hope is a continued denial of the partitioning.

June 18, 2003

No matter how your day is going, a good laugh makes it go better. To that end, I highly recommend a web site with my kind of humor—cynical British wit that zeroes in on the follies of male-female relationships. Check out “things my girlfriend and I have argued about.” I rarely read something that makes me laugh out loud, and in fact, made me incapable of reading it to Laurel because I was choked up with laughter. But some of the (numerous) postings on this site did just that. Be sure to click on Margret’s photo.

Margret and the author, Mil, seem to have a pretty serious thing going, as two kids are mentioned. So the anecdotes will reverberate with married folks, as well as dating folks. This bit certainly rang true to me:

Margret once said to me, “Am I your favorite woman in the world?” The world? I mean, really. Other times she’ll lay mines so we can explode into an argument later with the minimum amount of run-up. She’ll go out and, over her shoulder as she closes the door, call, “You can vacuum the house if you want.” I’ll settle down on the computer for a couple of hours. When she returns she’ll stomp up the stairs, crash open the door and growl, “Why didn’t you vacuum the house?” I, naturally, will reply, “You said I could if I wanted to. And, after thinking about it, I decided I didn’t. Obviously, it wasn’t a decision I took lightly…” and we’re already there.

Along these lines, Laurel spent last weekend in the Bay Area (of California) with two college-era girlfriends, so I had three days of dog-sitting to manage. I was left with a page of dog-duties to attend to each day, including, “Check on dog periodically to be sure you haven’t forgotten her somewhere while you are engrossed in computer or television.” Laurel felt this rather degrading reminder was necessary because, in the past few weeks, I had (1) left the dog locked by herself in the mostly unused side of the house for several hours, and thought she was quietly sleeping the whole time (which she may have been, actually), and (2) left her tied up outside in the carport one night, and similarly was blissfully unaware of the dog’s whereabouts until Laurel remembered that we had a dog, and wondered where she might be.

Since keeping track of Serena occupied most of my waking thoughts over the weekend, I wasn’t able to accomplish any of the other chores (“you might want to finish cleaning out the garage”) Laurel had over-optimistically suggested to me before she left. I did a great job with the dog, I’d say, since she was ready and waiting to greet Laurel when she walked in the door. My only demerits, assigned after Laurel did her usual walk-through the house to see how I had messed it up while she was gone, were a near-empty dog water bowl (don’t dogs store up water in their hump for weekends they are cared for by husbands?) and an unwashed dog dish (I had no idea dog dishes had to be washed; isn’t that what long tongues are for?).

I got to catch up on some of the sex and violence movies that Laurel doesn’t like, and managed to get through three full days on the leftovers in the refrigerator—plus a stop to buy stir-fry at the Sunnyside Vista Market. All in all, a good weekend. On Father’s Day I took my canine daughter to the Minto-Brown dog play area for a little bonding experience. However, since I forgot to bring water, and it was close to 90 degrees, Serena didn’t hang in on the playing very long. I was impressed that some (responsible) dog-owners were carrying dog water bottles with a slurpable detachable tray into which water could be poured.

Laurel came home with greater insight into the anxieties faced by her divorced female psychotherapy clients, when the kids spend the weekend with their father. But, hey, Serena did just fine with me, as most children do with their dads. Bowls don’t have to be washed daily, and I learned that dogs can handle moderate dehydration.

June 13, 2003

Because of the bad economic times, we're thinking of branching out into some other entrepreneurial directions. As part of our market research, we'd be interested in the level of interest among HinesSight readers of tasteful pet-erotica. We have a live-in model who works for almost free (dog biscuits are cheap), and Laurel loves to snap photos of her in alluring poses. We're pretty sure a pet-erotica web site would be legal (though one never knows with Ashcroft around) but the question is: how much would people pay to view it? This is one of those secret passions that few like to talk about, but if you know an admirer of pet-erotica, or are one yourself, let us know your opinion of this potentially lucrative venture. Of course, if we pursue this, we'll need some additional models. Pet owners, keep a camera handy. Who knows, your gerbil might be the next digital centerfold on our new web site.

A tale of two strawberries, and what they tell us about the way of the modern world: one was part of a box bought in a Fred Meyer supermarket not long ago, nicely packaged in a plastic container that described its California origins. Large, red, attractive. And quite tasteless. The other came from a half flat of local berries bought last Wednesday from the people who park their pickup near the junction of Liberty and Commercial streets. Smallish, a darker red, slightly blemished. And sweet beyond words. Yet, I just read that Oregon strawberry growers are finding it tough to sell their superior crop because other producers are cheaper, and their berries travel better.

As a strawberry aficionado, I find this deeply disturbing. I can tolerate global warming, destruction of the ozone layer, burning of the rain forests, extinctions of species. But if globalization and bottom-line-oriented factory farming ends up putting Oregon strawberry farms out of business, I’ll find a black anarchist hood and a baseball bat, and head for the plate glass windows of the nearest branch of the World Bank. This is serious stuff, strawberries. We simply can’t allow our children’s children to grow up not knowing what a real strawberry tastes like.

Sustainability really hits home when it impacts your taste buds. So many environmental and ecological concerns are abstract, far away, distantly removed from us by time or space. But to eat a local berry just hours from the vine, bought from the back of a beat-up pickup truck, handed to me by real people with red stains on their hands and a smile on their faces—that is what sustainability is all about. It’s crazy that we put up with tasteless food shipped hundreds or thousands of miles, when much better produce is grown just a few miles away. Every time I go into Fred Meyer (a Kroger store) during strawberry season in Oregon, and see the piles of California berry boxes, I’m struck by the absurdity of modern economic life.

Of course, I’ve been known to order a book from Amazon, delivered to my door by UPS from a warehouse halfway across America, when I could have gotten it from Jackson’s Books in downtown Salem. So I’m as bad as Kroger, though not on the same scale. Local isn’t always good, and far away bad, but we all do need to think about what we’re doing when we make a supposedly innocent purchase. Stop at the next roadside fruit stand you pass. Stroll into your local bookstore. You may pay a bit more than you would at the supermarket or Amazon, but what you get will have that sweet personal taste of locality.

June 09, 2003

Yesterday we learned that an “easy” hiking trail can be decidedly not-so-easy for mountain bikers, especially when the bikers in question (namely, us) are more accurately termed “Mini-Mountain bikers.” That is, we like to ride on big-tired, rear-suspensioned, mucho-geared bicycles, but we prefer to skip the mountains that these bikes are, judging by their name, intended to be rode on by those who are less attached to life and limb than we are.

However, we wish to emphasize that the Deschutes River Trail (from the Meadow Picnic Area to Dillon Falls) is beautiful and well worth traversing, by which we mean, on foot. Unless, of course, you are a member of the species of mountain bikers we saw zooming past us on the trail—the strange breed, quite common around Bend, who ride about ten times faster up hills than we ride down them, and who carry no discernible belongings with them other than a large hydration pack on their back, as contrasted to the Hines’, who never venture more than a hundred yards from their car on their bikes without energy bars, first aid kits, cell phones, GPS receiver, camera, litter bags, maps, repair kits, and more besides.

It isn’t a good mountain biking sign for us when we start right out from the trailhead pushing our bikes up a steep hill. Then, for variety, we carried our bikes over large rocks. Then Laurel walked her bike down the equally steep other side of the hill, since for some reason she doesn’t like riding on sandy trails that slope decidedly sideways in the direction of a cliff that slopes even more decidedly into rapids of the Deschutes.

Plus, owing to the hot day and poor advice from her husband, Laurel was without her bike helmet, since I based our safety equipment choice on a single photo on p. 85 in William Sullivan’s Central Oregon Cascades hiking book, a photo which must show the only section of the Deschutes River Trail that doesn’t feature large rocks, steep inclines, precipices, overhanging boulders, or large trees on both sides of the trail.

If either of the children who were riding with their fathers, and passed us on the trail Sunday, happen to stumble upon this weblog posting, we wish to say: “Kids, you may have said to your dads, ‘Why do we have to wear a helmet when that bearded man and blonde woman were just wearing caps?’ The answer is: ‘Because that man and that woman, though not brain dead, thought, many times, that they would be soon during the course of their anxiety-filled Deschutes River Trail bike ride.’”

We’ll try this trail again, I’m sure, with helmets on and Prozac in our veins. The Big Eddy section, a mile or so down the trail, is a great place to watch rafters hit some fairly large rapids. Great entertainment on a hot summer day, just as I’m sure we offered numerous rafters some chuckles yesterday as we braked and slid our way down River Trail slopes. Anyway, we survived. We met some nice people during our frequent pauses for breath and hydration. And we reminded ourselves that the worst day on a beautiful trail beats the best day spent inside at a desk.

June 07, 2003

Here we are in central Oregon (Camp Sherman), enjoying one of the world’s most beautiful rivers, the Metolius. The leftover Thai food in the refrigerator beckons, but a weblog posting beckons even more strongly. Brevity in writing is encouraged by gastric growlings, though. My verbosity would be minimized if I always wrote on an empty stomach.

I’ve been carrying around my new digital camera, an Olympus Stylus 300 that I had to get after my daughter visited with her stylish envy-inducing Canon Elph. Having a camera small enough to fit in a waist/fanny pack has been interesting for me. Early indications are that this piece of technology is subtly influencing how I experience the world—and in a positive fashion. I find myself looking more attentively at what there is to look at, assessing everything for its photographic possibilities. And because digital photography is costless, until a photo is printed, it is easy to say, “That’s interesting. I’ll capture the moment.”

Isn’t this what I should be saying to myself all the time? It’s kind of strange that it takes a camera in my pocket to open my eyes to what is around me—the play of the setting sun on ponderosa pines, our dog laying down in the cold river water to allay the 90 degree air, a deer jumping across Lake Creek. While walking along, all too often I’m immersed more in the ramblings of my internal mind than in the sights and sounds of external existence. Both are part of reality, to be sure, but the camera helps me focus on the simple substance of the objective reality that is reflected in my consciousness, rather than my subjective reflections that are, obviously, once removed from that natural substance itself.

Eventually, I hope, I’ll be my own camera, more accurately than now capturing the truth and beauty of what I experience. Until then Stylus 300 will be my crutch, and my reminder that whatever the ultimate nature of this physical world is, it will only come my way in this particular fashion this once, and never again. How precious is a single moment, then?

June 03, 2003

Driving around in my car last Sunday, searching for anything other than a right-wing talk show to listen to on the AM dial (a tough job), I heard the Dolenz’s (or should it be Dolenz’?), a husband and wife personal finance team, interviewing an economist who worked on a deficit study that recently got shelved by the Treasury Department when the conclusions didn’t mesh neatly with Bush’s tax cut plans. Well, not only didn’t the conclusions not mesh neatly, they were completely opposed to the notion of reducing taxes and increasing the federal deficit.

This column by Scott Burns on the same subject appeared the next day in our local newspaper. If that link doesn’t work (the Dallas News site wants folks to register to see their stories), here’s another story about the disappearing deficit study. It was astounding to hear this economist talk about the $44 trillion worth of long-term obligations this country faces, but doesn’t have the money for: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Yes, not billion, trillion. He said that it would take an immediate 69% across the board tax hike to get the federal budget back in balance, which, obviously, isn’t going to happen. Instead, Bush and the Congress are heading us in the opposite direction.

As a baby boomer, naturally I have a vested interest in making sure that there is some money lying around in another 8-10 years to fund my lavish Social Security years. But I also have a natural interest in not living in a bankrupt country. The economist, who had worked in both the Reagan and Bush1 administrations (so he isn’t a knee-jerk liberal), said that the United States actually is bankrupt already. We just don’t realize it. He felt that overnight Wall Street could wake up to the financial mess our government is in, and realize that printing money is going to be the only way out of the problem. Which means higher interest rates, and higher inflation.

Not cheery news, but the worst part of the story was that this study was deliberately quashed by the Bush administration. Not because it was wrong, but because it was right. It told too much truth. What a sad state of affairs, when your national leaders lie to you. I’d rather have a president who lies about his sex life, and keeps the economy strong, than have the sort of presidential liar we are suffering through now.

June 01, 2003

Proving that television isn’t a total wasteland, last night we stumbled upon C-Span2 coverage of the Book Expo America convention in Los Angeles. That doesn’t sound like stimulating viewing, but we picked the right time to be watching, as we got to see a hugely entertaining panel of politically-inclined authors: Molly Ivins, Bill O’Reilly, and Al Franken. This was stuff you don’t get to see on regular talk shows—the uncensored insults and anger. Ivins was rather mild, though we didn’t hear all of her remarks.

Then O’Reilly, host of the inaccurately titled “No-Spin Zone” on Fox (I believe) and author of a similarly named book, blabbed on for his fifteen minutes about what an accurate reporter he is, how they never have to make retractions on his TV show because their research is so extensive, how proud he is that he has gone beyond distinctions of liberal and conservative in his No-Spin search for the truth, and similar self-serving, egotistical blather.

It thus was a joy to have Al Franken take to the podium, hold up a draft cover of his upcoming book, "Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them -- a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," and ask O’Reilly if he could supply him with a better photo of himself for the cover. “Anything with your mouth open” would be great, Franken said. Franken then launched into an amusing dissertation about the lies put out by O’Reilly and other right-wing TV and radio talk show hosts—much of the time looking directly at O’Reilly as he trashed him and his peers. Franken’s point was that we don’t have to take this right-wing crap anymore. It is time to call them on their lies.

Franken then went into a hugely amusing riff about O’Reilly’s claim to have won two Peabody awards for his work on “Inside Edition,” and Franken’s efforts to get O’Reilly to admit that no Peabody awards had ever been given to that show. O’Reilly clearly was fuming as Franken spoke way over his allotted fifteen minutes, having built up too strong a head of liberal steam. The poor moderator, Pat Schroeder, had a difficult time handling O’Reilly and Franken when Al finally sat down. O’Reilly was seriously pissed off after being called a liar on national TV by Franken, and Franken was just as piqued at O’Reilly for having been so No-Spin sanctimonious, when he has no problem putting his own spin on awards that he never has won. O’Reilly claimed that he had forgotten that it wasn’t a Peabody that “Inside Edition” had won, but Laurel and I thought this was a pretty lame excuse. Could anyone really believe that they had won a Nobel prize, if they hadn’t?

Anyway, it was refreshing to watch Franken take on the right-wing jerks who mangle the facts, and then claim that they are the ones standing up for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. It also was refreshing to listen to someone who has both a great sense of humor and the guts to call it as he sees it. Franken mentioned that Ann Coulter had called him a friend in her book (Coulter is another conservative commentator who is even more obnoxious than O’Reilly, except she is attractive, slim, blonde, and wears short skirts on her TV appearances, which are four substantive points in her favor).

But that this was based on a single lunch Franken had with Coulter during which, Al said, he was too courteous, because he didn’t tell Coulter the truth: “I can’t stand you, and you are wrong about everything.” Franken can pull this stuff off with his engaging smile and wry attitude. Most anyone else would sound like a jerk if they uttered such sentiments. With Franken, you just wish that he would run for office, so you could finally vote for someone who truly says what he believes, and believes what he says.